Bonus Army - Aftermath

Aftermath

MGM released the movie Gabriel Over the White House in March 1933. Produced by William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan Pictures, it depicted a fictitious President Hammond who, in the film's opening scenes, refuses to deploy the military against a march of the unemployed and instead creates an "Army of Construction" to work on public works projects until the economy recovers. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt judged the movie's treatment of veterans superior to Hoover's.

The Bonus Army incident proved disastrous for Hoover's chances at re-election; he lost the 1932 election in a landslide to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

During the presidential campaign of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt opposed the veterans' bonus demands. When they organized a second demonstration in May 1933, he provided the marchers with a campsite in Virginia and provided them three meals a day. Administration officials, led by presidential confidant Louis Howe, tried to negotiate an end to the protest. Roosevelt arranged for his wife Eleanor to visit the site unaccompanied. She lunched with the veterans and listened to them perform songs. She reminisced about her memories of seeing troops off to World War I and welcoming them home. The most she could offer was a promise of positions in the newly created Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). One veteran commented: "Hoover sent the army, Roosevelt sent his wife". In a press conference following her visit, the First Lady described her reception as courteous and praised the marchers, highlighting how comfortable she felt despite critics of the marchers who described them as Communists and criminals.

Roosevelt later issued an executive order allowing the enrollment of 25,000 veterans in the CCC, exempting them from the normal requirement that applicants be unmarried and under the age of 25. Congress, where Democrats held majorities in both houses, passed the Adjusted Compensation Payment Act in 1936 authorizing the immediate payment of the $2 billion in WWI bonuses over the President's veto. The House vote was 324 to 61, and the Senate vote was 76 to 19.